


Dirt Dog

by falsemessiah



Series: Where There's a Will, There's a Wake [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drug Use, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6874549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsemessiah/pseuds/falsemessiah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants more. More of the heroin, more of the voice that itched at the back of his skull, more of the touch that almost seemed to hurt him. He wanted it the further it got away. The further it was out of reach, he ached increasingly so. The bruises on his body appeared the same way that Kavinsky would’ve left them, and it gave him the same sense of security the voice had when it wasn’t present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirt Dog

There were times when he left the syringe in his arm, the warmth of the smack wrapped around him and eased his mind it called his name and beckoned him to relax and learn to love again. To smile without hurting and to lay back and not be plagued with dreams of the fire that consumed Kavinsky that would wake him up in a clammy sweat. Swan had left for the night to drink in the backseat of the car and Skov locked himself in the bathroom three hours ago, the last time he was in there he had passed out on the floor alongside the shards of the broken bathroom mirror with blood they had let dry on the tile as he was raced to the emergency room in the back of the Golf as he bled all over the white leather upholstery.

Jiang couldn’t remember if it had been replaced, he couldn’t remember spending more than three hours sober in the past week and a half and he couldn’t remember if he really cared.

Here he was safe, he could pretend that everything was all right. The teen was laying facedown on his bed with his head hanging over the side of the bed sloppily positioned over a bucket breathing laboriously, a few parts of this he had to learn himself, choking on his own vomit because he didn’t lie on his side– if the others weren’t there to watch over him he wouldn’t have had a bruise on his chest from their sub par attempts to help him, he wouldn’t have been feeling anything at all.

His extremities were freezing, body floating, in a warm cloud wrapped in blankets with kisses from angels dusting his skin and releasing endorphins for him to absorb through his pores. His sorrow melting away with the heat in his chest and the mellow lull of his slowed heartbeat. This glimpse of heaven was all that he got, all that he deserved, bought with his father’s unending supply of money in little packets to be prepared for injection. A line to the things he couldn’t achieve on his own and an escape from the world he had planted himself in. K would’ve held him. K would’ve done a lot of things if his ghost didn’t haunt Jiang and echo painful memories every waking moment of the day, flashing every time the orange light of the street lamp washed his car’s dashboard in a saturated glow.

He needed to learn how to let go. This was lesson one.

This was the one lesson he’d come to learn.

Cold hands ran down Jiang’s back, his fogged mind registering the shock slowly and uneasily. Things like that happened from time to time. Whispers in his ear, distorted voices that were angry and happy at the same time. Two people talking at once telling him everything he needed to hear, what he wanted to hear with the slight Bulgarian accent and a soft breath against his neck. His eyes closed and he pretended that he wasn’t alone, that Kavinsky had slid up behind him and was about to stuff his cold hands down Jiang’s pants to warm them up.

It was easier to do it this way, to linger between conscious states and drink up the induced euphoria and reject reality.  

He wants more. More of the heroin, more of the voice that itched at the back of his skull, more of the touch that almost seemed to hurt him. He wanted it the further it got away. The further it was out of reach, he ached increasingly so. The bruises on his body appeared the same way that Kavinsky would’ve left them, and it gave him the same sense of security the voice had when it wasn’t present.

His dreams were full of him. And his life gave him nothing but the stinging emptiness that came with the loss of somebody who was so integral to his being. The one person who held his hand and wrapped an arm around his waist like it was second nature and gave him the keys to a car that was better and faster after he had wrecked the first.

The ghost didn’t do much, but the aura was all the same.

And it was okay. Everything was finally okay.


End file.
